Tens of thousands of people in India have taken to the streets in recent days to protest the deletion of 130 million names from the voter rolls, a large majority of which are believed to be opposed to Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP party. The demonstrations, joined by leaders from India’s opposition parties, are being led by students and the youth-led “Cockroach” movement. Tens of thousands of security forces, including paramilitary and police, were out on the streets over the weekend cracking down on the uprising, detaining protesters en masse, including lawyers, journalists and protest leaders.
The demonstrations “represent an outpouring of anger, of frustration at what many Indians feel is the fact that their democracy has been taken away,” says Shoaib Daniyal, political editor of Scroll, who was arrested on Saturday along with 7,000 other protesters. He points out that “the deletions have affected Muslims far more than they have affected other Indians.”
On Monday, in one of largest recent protests in India’s capital of New Delhi, India’s main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party, led a march to the Supreme Court of India. “This march has become a people’s march, with all of them heading towards this constitutional authority, which they feel should safeguard the rights of Indian people, especially this very basic right to vote,” says Jahnavi Sen, managing editor of The Wire.
